Tree Safety

A tree owner has a duty of care to take reasonable steps to ensure their trees do not cause harm to people and property. This is imposed my the 'common law' duty of care and Occupiers Liability Act.

In practice this means that if a tree causes damage to a person or property then the tree owner may be liable. The chances of making a claim, however, would usually depend on whether the owner had been negligent; for example, if the tree was obviously unsafe through damage or disease, and they failed to act to prevent the incident occurring. Therefore if you own trees it is sensible to have them regularly inspected by a competent arboriculturist.

What is reasonably practical action? - having the condition of your trees assessed by a qualified professional tree inspector and carrying out remedial recommendations is reasonable.

Tree Condition Assessment

We offer a Tree Condition Assessment which involves a field survey of your trees followed by a report containing the individual trees details including species, location, height and age class. Followed my a summary of the trees condition, management recommendations and a priority of works. further additions to this are often requested by clients and additions are often made.

Focused or full inventory

We can produce a full inventory of all trees within a property, giving fine details on all individual trees. This may however be un-necessary in which case field survey will inspect all trees but only record those showing defects or signs of concern.

Risk Zoning

Tree decay, standing deadwood, fungi and the many other tree related issues are only a problem in the presence of a target such as people or property. Deadwood has a high biodiversity value and is a key part of any woodland ecosystem, therefore removing trees where there is no target is un-reasonable.

It may be necessary to zone trees with High to Low risk zones in which case the time and cost of surveys is reduced and a reasonable step has been taken.

Scale and organisational policy

We survey everything from individual trees to vast estates, for some companies it may be necessary to create a tree safety policy to further demonstrate due diligence.